Friday, December 31, 2010

Well, 2010, did you live up to those expectations which I had of you? Let's see ... I chose the words discipline, healing and authentic as thematic for 2010. Wow. How could I have possibly known how these three words would become so huuuge in my life? It sure takes a lot of discipline to submit oneself and one's will and one's life over to healing an addiction. When I chose those words for 2010, I had no clue, really. Was I just fooling myself? Yes ... yes, indeed. Looking back though, I get chills at what seems like prophesy.

So, how did I fare in 2010? Well, make no bones about it ~ healing and recovery is friggin difficult work! An addiction does certainly not get wished away. Sobriety comes only to those who work at it, continuously. Even when things feel sh!tty; especially when things feel sh!tty. And you know what? Authenticity came along when sobriety settled upon me. At 41 years of age, I rediscovered the person I really am. Part of that is being Wulftin's wife. I thank God that I realized this before it was too late. Marriage isn't always all wine and roses; it's difficult work, even gruelling sometimes. I've found the work always worth the trials and tribulations.

Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.
When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person,
place, thing, or situation--some fact of my life--unacceptable to me,
and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing,
or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.
Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake.
Until I could accept my addiction, I could not stay clean;
unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy.
I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world
as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.

Simply put, I have no power over people, places and things. Setting expectations high, (or at all) just opens the door for my disappointments, when life falls short of said expectations. Contentment in my life has an inverse relationship with any expectations I have for and in my life. Acceptance, perhaps, seems closely related to surrender. As I grow further into my recovery I have to learn how to accept things I used to chase away with my addiction. Feelings, for instance; as in, intense emotions of any kind. They still feel awkward and unpleasant to me, and my first instinct tells me to run, run away. It takes all of my will power to stay in the moment, and sit with whatever feeling washes over me. Then, at that moment, acceptance comes into play. My failure to accept life as it happens results in more pain for me.

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Welcome to Insanity

Depression is such a cruel punishment. There are no fevers, no rashes, no blood tests to send people scurrying in concern. Just the slow erosion of the self, as insidious as any cancer. And, like cancer, it is essentially a solitary experience. A room in hell with only your name on the door. I realize that every person, at some point, takes up residence in one or another of these rooms. But that realization provides no relief from said hell.

It seems to me the basic definition of mental illness: a persistent, painful inability to simply be with someone else. It might be lifelong, or it might descend like a sudden catastrophe, this blankness between ourselves and the rest of the world. The blankness might not even be obvious to others. But on our side of that severed connection, it's hell, a life lived behind glass.

Fear?

Distilling Life

I sometimes like to lose myself in the thought that I am merely a culmination of various chemical reactions occuring at the cellular level of my body. What directs these chemical reactions? Is that where individuality resides? When I consider pharmaceuticals and their effect, it can make sense - chemical reactions fueling existence. Perhaps the Seroquel XR I'm taking bridges some cellular, chemical gap or deficiency. The perceived effect being an insular stabilizing of my mood. Does it all seem a bit too simple? Can we really distill life down to a few chemical reactions?
I wonder. Perhaps, then, divinity resides within those chemical reactions?

Words of Wisdom

"Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you're called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can't ever get back down. I have a great friend who became a Twitterer and he says he hasn't written anything for a year."~ David Eggers

"Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form."~ Rumi

"If we do not transform our pain we will surely transmit it."~ Richard Rohr

"We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late."~ Marie Beynon Ray

“Love is not a victory march. It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”~ Leonard Cohen

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.~ Anais Nin

"All of us live in exile in a real way. As St. Paul puts it, we see as 'through a glass darkly,' through an enigma, separated always partially from God and each other."~ Ron Rolheiser, OMI

"Truth is shattered into a thousand pieces when God throws it down to earth."~Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

“The act of building is the physical tangible expression of promise.”~ Unknown

'The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.'~ Dorothea Lange

"Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.”~ Thomas Merton, Journal: October 2, 1958

“The authentic self is the soul made visible.”~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

"A diamond only shines after it's been cut."~ Danielle LaPorte

"Having a grievance is like drinking poison and thinking it will kill your enemy."~ Nelson Mandela

“The absence of fear is not courage. The absence of fear is some kind of brain damage.”~ M. Scott Peck

"Art washes away from the soul, the dust of everyday life."~ Picasso

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."~ Thomas Merton

"Worry is like a rocking chair--it gives you something to do but it doesn't get you anywhere."~ Unknown

"A photograph is a painting made by the eye, using light as the paintbrush."~ Roxanne Galpin

"The most important events make no stir on their first taking place, nor indeed in their effects directly. They seem hedged about by secrecy. It is concussion, or the rushing together of air to fill a vacuum, which makes a noise. The great events to which all things consent, and for which they have prepared the way, produce no explosion, for they are gradual, and create no vacuum which requires to be suddenly filled; as a birth takes place in silence, and is whispered about the neighborhood. Corn grows in the night."~ Henry David Thoreau

“The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.”